I mean that Carmichael was something much different from the self-styled freedom fighters, and that he was consciously moving to a more inclusive, pragmatic position. (Among other things, he was extremely intelligent; he graduated near the top of his class at Bronx Science, and turned down a slew of Ivies to go to Howard.)

Given his persona, if nothing else, I don't think he could have achieved the sort of stature King did. But he was the only person who combined a national visibility with a clear (if evolving) explanation of Black Power that, I think, could have gained an influential foothold. He offered a lot more than chest-thumping, and had he continued with his late-1967/early 1968 activism, he could have gained a wide audience. (Then again, this is just parlor-game speculation. Who knows?)

King was, as Todd notes, still a near-universally adored figure at the time of his death.

Generally, a writer who wishes his readers to follow along with his argument should eschew these sorts of gratuitous encomiums; they can only result in the reader drifting away to chew on the question of whether the assertion is accurate.

Here, of course, the assertion is ridiculous. While, "at the time of his death," a vast majority of African-Americans may have loved MLK and the remainder respected him, the vast majority of Americans wouldn't have given him a second thought -- except on those infrequent occasions when he popped up on the nightly news.

Stokely Carmichael would not have been the person to "take up King's mantle," as Risen asserts. (Almost like he's just pulling names out of a hat.)

First, let's read from the New York Times obituary of Carmichael, shall we?

Rejecting scholarships from several white universities, he entered Howard University in Washington in 1960. [Comment: Howard University is a stellar HBCU (historically black college or university). It is not to be confused with Harvard.] By the end of his freshman year, he had joined the Freedom Rides of the Congress of Racial Equality, hazardous bus trips of blacks and whites that challenged segregated interstate travel in the South. The Freedom Riders often met with violence, and at their destinations Carmichael and the others were arrested and jailed, the first incarcerations he experienced. One early arrest brought him a particularly harsh 49-day sentence in Parchman Penitentiary in Mississippi.

But, Risen suggests that in 1968 and beyond Carmichael might have been "the one" black America turned to. But here's the chronology, courtesy of the NYT:

In 1966 and 1967 Carmichael lectured at campuses around the United States and traveled abroad to several countries, including North Vietnam, China and Cuba. He made perhaps his most provocative statement in Havana. "We are preparing groups of urban guerrillas for our defense in the cities," he said. "It is going to be a fight to the death."

In 1967 a declining SNCC severed all ties with him. Soon after, he became honorary prime minister of the Black Panthers, the ultra-militant urban organization begun by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. But he soon found himself embroiled with Panther leaders for opposing their decision to seek support among whites. He moved to Guinea, in West Africa, in 1969, saying, "America does not belong to the blacks," and calling on all black Americans to follow his example.

And Carmichael did not exile himself to "Ghana," but to Guinea. Let's read a little, okay?

n July 1969, three months after he moved to Africa, he made public a letter announcing his resignation from the Black Panther Party because of what he called "its dogmatic party line favoring alliances with white radicals."

The letter signaled Carmichael's break from the main currents of American life. He made his home in Conakry as the guest of Sekou Toure, the Marxist head of a one-party state. His next-door neighbor was Kwame Nkrumah, the Pan-Africanist first leader of independent Ghana, who after being deposed in a coup in 1966 was offered sanctuary in Guinea.

In 1968, now calling himself Kwame Ture, he married Miriam Makeba, the South African singer. They lived in a seaside villa where he sometimes greeted visitors wearing the green uniform of a Guinean soldier, a pistol at his side. After they divorced, he married Marlyatou Barry, a Guinean doctor who now lives in Arlington, Va., and from whom he was also divorced. He is survived by his mother, three sisters and two sons, according to a statement by the All African Peoples Revolutionary Party.

So Carmichael had moved to an even more radical position, well before Dr. King's assassination, and ultimately ended up isolated and splintered off from the mainstream of the movement -- where he would need to be to have the rest of the movement coalesce around.

But my fundamental criticism of Risen and his theory centers on the continued notion that there must be "one leader at a time," in the black community. That suggests that we are incapable of multi-tiered, multi-pronged, multi-directional actions, philosophies, priorities, goals and results.

That is simply not true. The problem with revisionist historians is that they posit theories into which giant holes can be poked. The civil rights movement was and continues to be complex and evolving entity that cannot be neatly folded down, tucked in a box and tied with a ribbon.

If anyone learns anything from this discussion, please let that be the takeaway.